Books of Note Archives
Listed alphabetically by title.
Cathy
Cobb
Magick,
Mayhem, and Mavericks: The Spirited History of Physical Chemistry
Prometheus
Books, 2002, ISBN: 1-57392-976-X, $29
Her tale is about the colorful varieties of human character as well as the struggles to understand the workings of the material world. Through true stories of rebels, recluses, heroes, and rogues, she helps the reader to discover how one idea built upon another and how an elegant discipline arose out of centuries of difficult trial and error.
Starting with the ancient Greeks, Cobb takes the reader on a sweeping tour of history. She shows how an understanding of basic chemical properties gradually arose out of ancient Greeks mathematics, Muslim science, medieval "magick," and the healing arts. Her tour continues through the scientific revolution, the emergence of physical chemistry as an independent discipline, and up to the present. Today, physical chemists contribute to the fields of chemical physiology, chemical oscillations and waves, quantum mechanics, and the curious and promising field of nanotechnology.
Jack
Repcheck
The
Man Who Found Time: James Hutton and the Discovery of the Earth's
Antiquity
Perseus
Publishing, June 2003, ISBN: 073820692X, $26
There are three men whose contributions helped free science from the straitjacket of theology. Two of the three тАФ Nicolaus Copernicus and Charles тАФ are widely known and heralded for their breakthroughs. The third, James Hutton, never received the same recognition, yet he profoundly changed our understanding of the earth and its dynamic forces. Hutton proved that the earth was likely millions of years old rather than the biblically determined six thousand, and that it was continuously being shaped and re-shaped by myriad everyday forces rather than one cataclysmic event. In this expertly crafted narrative, Jack Repcheck tells the remarkable story of this Scottish gentleman farmer and how his simple observations on his small tract of land led him to a theory that was in direct confrontation with the Bible and that also provided the scientific proof that would spark Darwin's theory of evolution. It is also the story of Scotland and the Scottish Enlightenment, which brought together some of the greatest thinkers of the age, from David Hume and Adam Smith to James Watt and Erasmus Darwin. Finally, it is a story about the power of the written word. Repcheck argues that Hutton's work was lost to history because he could not describe his findings in graceful and readable prose. (Unlike Darwin's Origin of the Species, Hutton's one and only book was impenetrable.) A marvelous narrative about a little-known man and the science he founded, The Man Who Found Time is also a parable about the power of books to shape the history of ideas.
Arthur
Upgren
Many
Skies: Alternative Histories of the Sun, Moon, Planets and Stars
Rutgers University Press, 2005, ISBN: 0-8135-3512-3, $24.95
What if Earth had several moons or massive rings like Saturn? What if the Sun were but one star in a double-star or triple-star system. What if Earth were the only planet circling the Sun? These and other imaginative scenarios are the subject of Many Skies. As well as examining the changes in science that these alternative solar, stellar, and galactic arrangements would have brought, the author also explores the different theologies, astrologies, and methods of tracking time that would have developed to reflect them. Our perception of our surroundings, the number of gods we worship, the symbols we use in art and literature, even the way we form nations and empires are all closely tied to our particular (and accidental) placement in the universe.
Oliver
Morton
Mapping
Mars: Science, Imagination and the Birth of a World
Picador USA, 2002, ISBN: 0-312-24551-3, $30
Who are the extraordinary individuals that will take us on the next great space race, the next great human endeavor, our exploration and colonization of the planet Mars? And more importantly, how are they doing it? Acclaimed science writer Oliver Morton explores the peculiar and fascinating world of the new generation of explorers: geologists, scientists, astrophysicists and dreamers. Morton shows us the complex and beguiling role that mapping will play in our understanding of the red planet, and more deeply, what it means for humans to envision such heroic landscapes. Charting a path from the 19th century visionaries to the spy-satellite pioneers to the science fiction writers and the arctic explorers—till now, to the people are taking us there—Morton unveils the central place that Mars has occupied in the human imagination, and what it will mean to realize these dreams. A pioneering work of journalism and drama, Mapping Mars gives us our first exciting glimpses of the world to come and the curious, bizarre, and amazing people who will take us there.
Henry
Albers, Ed.
Maria
Mitchell: A Life in Journals and Letters
College Avenue Press (e-mail: CollegeAvePress@aol.com),
October 2001, ISBN: 1-883551-89-7, $27.95
From the Foreword: "Nineteenth century America was filled with pioneers whose lives revolved around exploration and discovery…(Maria Mitchell’s) territory was the heavens, and her exploration made her a leader in the advancement of women in science…." America’s first woman astronomer was born in 1818 on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, where women were largely self-sufficient since Nantucket men were gone to sea for long periods. She became well-versed in the operation of key navigational devices such as the sextant and telescope and taught herself the fundamentals of calculus and higher-level mathematics while serving as librarian at the Nantucket Antheneum library. Twenty years later, now internationally renowned, she was a welcome guest in salons of the world’s leading scientists and literary figures and served for more than two decades at the first Professor of Astronomy at Vassar College. Featuring extensive excerpts from Maria Mitchell’s diaries and journals, this richly illustrated book was edited by Henry Albers, astronomy professor for 22 years at Vassar College and the fifth director of the Vassar College Observatory.
Edward
Harrison
Masks
of the Universe: Changing Ideas on the Nature of the Cosmos, 2/e
Cambridge
University Press, 2003, ISBN: 0-521-77351-2, $30
To the ancient Greeks the universe consisted of earth, air, fire and water. To Saint Augustine it was the Word of God. To many modern scientists it is the interaction of atoms and waves, and in years to come it may be different again. What then is the real universe? History shows that in every age society constructs its own universe, believing it to be the real and final one. Yet these are only models, or masks covering what is not understood and not known. This book brings together fundamental scientific, philosophical, and religious issues in cosmology, raising thought provoking questions. In every age people have pitied the universes of their ancestors, convinced that they have at last discovered the full truth. Do we now stand at the threshold of knowing everything, or will our latest model also be rejected by our descendants?
This new edition has been completely rewritten and includes new chapters on the nature of time, and of perception. It broadens the popular treatment of cosmology, and includes topics such as the containment riddle, the creation and design of the universe, and the meaning of consciousness.
John
Casti
Mathematical
Mountaintops: The Five Most Famous Problems of All Time
Oxford University Press, 2001, ISBN: 0-19-514171-7, $27.50
In this journey through the "Himalayas of mathematics," the author recreates the solutions to the five greatest mathematical problems of all time: The Four-Color Map Problem, Fermat’s Last Theorem, The Continuum Hypothesis, Kepler’s Conjecture, and Hilbert’s Tenth Problem. In retelling the story of Hilbert's Tenth Problem, for instance, he sweeps from Britain to New York to Leningrad and introduces us to such luminaries as Alan Turing, before turning to the young Soviet researcher who credited his breakthrough to a 700-year-old Italian problem about rabbits. He describes how Fermat's Last Theorem tantalized generations of scientists, who tried for three centuries to answer it, and relates how the final solution was greeted with the unprecedented front-page headlines, prize money, and international celebration--before a flaw (soon resolved) turned up. Casti's account of the struggle to solve Kepler's Conjecture wittily reveals how the "proof of the obvious" sometimes eludes us for centuries. And his discussion of The Continuum Hypothesis movingly portrays the tragic figure of Georg Cantor, the troubled genius who created the first truly original mathematics since the Greeks, yet died insane in an institution. Casti closes with a preview of the "Magnificent Seven" - the greatest unsolved mathematical mysteries, each of which carries a million-dollar bounty from the Clay Mathematics Institute -including the Poincare Conjecture, the Yang-Mills Existence and Mass Gap (why physicists can't isolate quarks), and the Reimann Hypothesis ("the granddaddy of all mathematical mysteries").
Jeffrey Bennett, with illustrations by Alan Okamoto
Max
Goes to the Moon |
 |
Max
Goes to Mars |
 |
Max goes to the Moon combines a lavishly illustrated picture book format with fundamental science concepts. In this adventure, Max the Dog and his young human friend Tori undertake a quest to make the first trip to the Moon since the Apollo era. Their trip inspires the nations of the world to join together to build a Moon colony. The engaging story encourages children to learn, dream, and explore, while offering the message that we live on a precious planet. Everything that happens in the story corresponds to scientific principles which are clearly explained in "Big Kid Boxes" that appear on each page. At the end of the book there is a simple science-based activity that children and parents can enjoy together.
Just published, Max Goes to Mars finds Max the dog is ready for his next adventure — the first human mission to Mars. But the trip is too long for his human friend Tori to make, so she helps Max prepare for the journey. On the red planet, Max sniffs out many mysteries — and makes one of the most important discoveries of all time. This engaging story fuels young readers' interest in space travel, while explaining difficult scientific concepts in an easy-to-understand manner.
Ken
Alder
The
Measure Of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That
Transformed the World
Free Press, 2002, ISBN: 0-743-21675-X, $27.00
From the Prologue: In June 1792—in the dying days of the French monarchy, as the world began to revolve around a new promise of Revolutionary equality—two astronomers set out in opposite directions on an extraordinary quest. The erudite and cosmopolitan Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Delambre made his way north from Paris, while the cautious and scrupulous Pierre-François-André Méchain made his way south. Each man left the capital in a customized carriage stocked with the most advanced scientific instruments of the day and accompanied by a skilled assistant. Their mission was to measure the world, or at least that piece of the meridian arc, which ran from Dunkerque through Paris to Barcelona. Their hope was that all the world's peoples would henceforth use the globe as their common standard of measure. Their task was to establish this new measure—"the meter"—as one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the equator.
The meter would be eternal because it had been taken from the earth, which was itself eternal. And the meter would belong equally to all the people of the world, just as the earth belonged equally to them all. In the words of their Revolutionary colleague Condorcet—the founder of mathematical social science and history's great optimist—the metric system was to be "for all people, for all time."
Martin
Gorst
Measuring
Eternity: The Search for the Beginning of Time
Broadway Books, 2001, ISBN: 0-7679-0827-9, $23.95
The untold story of the religious figures, philosophers, astronomers, geologists, physicists, and mathematicians who, for more than four hundred years, have pursued the answer to a fundamental question at the intersection of science and religion: When did the universe begin? From the story of Bishop James Ussher who asserted the world and time began at 6 PM on Saturday, October 22, 4004 BC to the Hubble Space Telescope’s current estimate of 13.4 billion years.
David
H. Clark & Matthew D. H. Clark
Measuring
the Cosmos: How Scientists Discovered the Dimensions of the Universe
Rutgers University Press, 2004, ISBN: 0-8135-3404-6, $22.95
Humans have always viewed the heavens with wonder and awe. The skies have inspired reflection on the vastness of space, the wonder of creation, and humankind's role in the universe. In just over one hundred years, science has moved from almost total ignorance about the actual distances to the stars and earth's place in the galaxy to our present knowledge about the enormous size, mass, and age of the universe. We are reaching the limits of observation, and therefore the limits of human understanding. Beyond lies only our imagination, seeded by the theories of physics. In Measuring the Cosmos, science writers David and Matthew C